Tuesday, August 8, 2017

TRUMP’S EVANGELICAL LEADERS - want to meet with POPE FRANCIS - However, as publicly self-acclaimed devoted followers of Jesus - PRIOR to any set meeting with Pope Francis - as Jesus stated there is “One thing you lack: GO AND SELL ALL YOU POSSESS AND GIVE TO THE POOR, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Mark 10:21 - It is a matter of good faith and sincerity.

And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments, ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to Him,

“Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.”

Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him,

“One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

And Jesus, looking around, *said to His disciples,

“How hard it will be for those who arewealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus *answered again and *said to them,

“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for arich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

They were even more astonished and said to Him, “Then who can be saved?” Looking at them, Jesus *said,

“With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

Peter began to say to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.” Jesus said,

“Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with

Cathedral of Light - - The 1934 rally also introduced the spectacle of the Cathedral of Light—130 anti-aircraft searchlights pointed skyward to create columns of light.

Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism

Ian Kershaw - 2004

…The quest for national rebirth lay, of course, at the heart of all fascist movements. But only in Germany did the striving for national renewal adopt such stronglypseudo-religioustones…

…They could find rationality in irrationality; could turn into practical reality the goals associated with Hitler, needing no further legitimitation than recourse to the ‘wish of the Führer’. This was no ‘banality of evil’. This was the working of an ideologically-motivated élite coldly prepared to plan for the eradication of 11 million Jews (the figure laid down at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942), and for the ‘resettlement’ to the Siberian wastes, plainly genocidal in intent, of over 30 million, mainly Slavs, over the following 25 years. That, in such a system, they would find countless ‘willing executioners’ prepared to do their bit, whatever the individual motivation of those involved, goes without saying. This was, however, not on account of national character, or some long-existent, specifically German desire to eliminate the Jews. Rather, it was that the idea ofracial cleansing, the core of the notion of national salvation, had become, via Hitler’s leadership position, institutionalized in all aspects of organized life in the nazi state. That was decisive.

Unquestionably, Hitler was a unique historical personality. But the uniqueness of the nazi dictatorship cannot be reduced to that. It is explained less by Hitler’s character, extraordinary as it was, than by the specific form of rule which he embodied and its corrupting effect on the instruments and mechanisms of the most advanced state in Europe. Both the broad acceptance of the ‘project’ of ‘national salvation’, seen as personified in Hitler, and the internalization of the ideological goals by a new, modern power-élite, operating along- side weakened old élites through the bureaucratic sophistication of a modern state, were necessary prerequisites for the world-historical catastrophe of the Third Reich.

…TRUTH is the light that gives meaning and value to CHARITY. That light is both the light of REASON and the light of FAITH, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as GIFT, acceptance, and communion. WITHOUT truth, charity degenerates into SENTIMENTALITY. Love becomes an EMPTY SHELL, to be filled in an ARBITRARY way. In a CULTURE without truth, this is the FATAL risk facing love. It FALLS prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted,to the point where it comes to MEAN the opposite. Truth FREES charity from the constraints of an EMOTIONALISM that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a FIDEISM that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word…

REASON always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself OMNIPOTENT. For its part, RELIGION always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…

(AP) A close confidant of Pope Francis, writing Thursday in a Vatican-approved magazine, condemned the way some American evangelicals and their Roman Catholic supporters mix religion and politics, saying their worldview promotes division and hatred.

The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, editor of the influential Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, said a shared desire for political influence between “evangelical fundamentalists” and some Catholics has inspired an “ecumenism of conflict” that demonizes opponents and promotes a “theocratic type of state.”

Spadaro also took aim at conservative religious support for President Donald Trump, accusing activists of promoting a “xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations.” Trump has sought to bar travelers from six Muslim-majority countries and vowed to build a wall on the Mexican border.

The article, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,” was co-written by a Presbyterian pastor, the Rev. Marcelo Figueroa, who is editor of the Argentine edition of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in the pope’s native country…

President Trump departing for a vacation on Thursday. The sheer magnitude of his falsehoods and exaggerations is giving political historians pause. Credit Al Drago for The New York Times - Photo

Many Politicians Lie. But Trump Has Elevated the Art of Fabrication.

AUG. 7, 2017

Brief excerpts:

WASHINGTON…Fabrications have long been a part of American politics. Politicians lie to puff themselves up, to burnish their résumés and to cover up misdeeds, including sexual affairs. (See: Bill Clinton.) Sometimes they cite false information for what they believe are justifiable policy reasons. (See: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam.)

But President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called “the conflict between truth and politics” to an entirely new level.

From his days peddling the false notion that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to his inflated claims about how many people attended his inaugural, to his description just last week of receiving two phone calls — one from the president of Mexico and another from the head of the Boy Scouts — that never happened, Mr. Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis.

In part, this represents yet another way that Mr. Trump is operating on his own terms, but it also reflects a broader decline in standards of truth for political discourse. A look at politicians over the past half-century makes it clear that lying in office did not begin with Donald J. Trump. Still, the scope of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods raises questions about whether the brakes on straying from the truth and the consequences for politicians’ being caught saying things that just are not true have diminished over time…

Over the past two decades, institutional changes in American politics have made it easier for politicians to lie. The proliferation of television political talk shows and the rise of the internet have created a fragmented media environment. With no widely acknowledged media gatekeeper, politicians have an easier time distorting the truth…

But other presidential lies, like Mr. Trump’s false claim that millions of undocumented immigrants had cast ballots for his opponent in the 2016 election, are far more substantive, and pose a threat, scholars say, that his administration will build policies around them.

The glaring difference between Mr. Trump and his predecessors is the sheer magnitude of falsehoods and exaggerations; PolitiFact rates just 20 percent of the statements it reviewed as true, and a total of 69 percent either mostly false, false or “Pants on Fire.” That leaves scholars like Ms. Goodwin to wonder whether Mr. Trump, in elevating the art of political fabrication, has forever changed what Americans are willing to tolerate from their leaders.

“What’s different today and what’s scarier today is these lies are pointed out, and there’s evidence that they’re wrong,” she said. “And yet because of the attacks on the media, there are a percentage of people in the country who are willing to say, ‘Maybe he is telling the truth.’”

President Trump’s evangelical advisory board is asking Pope Francis for meetings with him and other high-level Vatican officials to discuss “efforts to divide evangelicals and Catholics.”

The request, which was first reported in Time, comes a few weeks after two of Francis’s closest allies published an extremely critical article about the shared political activism of conservative evangelicals and Catholics, saying it has “an ideology of conquest.”

The piece attracted wide attention because of the connection that the authors — an Italian Catholic priest and an Argentine Presbyterian pastor — have to the pope and because of its range: It disparaged everything from conservative evangelicalism and prosperity gospel to the popular idea that the United States is blessed by God. It was published mid-July in the influential Rome-based Jesuit publication La Civilta Cattolica.

It was the latest in a series of rocky back-and-forths between Trump’s circle and the pope’s, over issues including a U.S.-Mexico wall and climate change.

The letter, dated Aug. 3, was signed by Johnnie Moore, a former vice president of Liberty University who now serves as a spokesman for a few dozen evangelicals who informally advise Trump and who represent the faith group seen as having the most regular access to the White House since the election.

People who have been in group meetings at the White House include Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and Paula White of New Destiny Christian Center in Florida…

An Evangelical leader aligned with Donald Trump has called an article about U.S. politics in the Jesuit-run journal La Civiltà Cattolica “incendiary,” but says "rather than being offended, we have chosen to attempt to make peace," and asked for a meeting with Pope Francis.

A leading Evangelical advisor of President Donald Trump has written a letter to Pope Francis, requesting that the pontiff meet with Evangelical leaders after an article in a Vatican-reviewed journal accused the Trump administration of being under the sway of a “strange ecumenism” made up of fundamentalists and “integralist” Catholics leading to a “Manichean vision.”

The August 3 letter was sent by Johnnie Moore, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board. Moore currently serves as the CEO of The Kairos Company, a public relations and communications consulting firm he founded, and is a former vice president at Liberty University.

Only a short excerpt of the letter has been made public, and was published in Time on August 7, 2017.

“It’s in this moment of ongoing persecution, political division and global conflict that we have also witnessed efforts to divide Catholics and Evangelicals. We think it would be of great benefit to sit together and to discuss these things. Then, when we disagree we can do it within the context of friendship. Though, I’m sure we will find once again that we agree far more than we disagree, and we can work together with diligence on those areas of agreement.”

The letter was in response to an article in the Jesuit-run journal La Civiltà Cattolica, which is reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State prior to publication, written by Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, one of Francis’s closest collaborators, and Marcelo Figueroa, a longtime Protestant friend hand-picked by Francis to edit the Argentinian version of L’Osservatore Romano…

“I believe that many Catholics believe themselves to be perfect and despise others. This is sad,”

Pope Francis - August 9, 2017

Pope Francis: Jesus embraces “the outcast, the untouchables”

August 9, 2017

"I believe that many Catholics believe themselves to be perfect and despise others. This is sad," the pope said in an off-the-cuff remark during his weekly general audience. “We who are used to experiencing the forgiveness of sins, perhaps a little too ‘cheaply’, should sometimes remember how much we cost the love of God.”

ROME - Jesus did not die on the Cross because he healed the sick, called for mercy or preached the beatitudes, but because he forgave sins, Pope Francis told the faithful gathered for his weekly general audience.

Jesus embraces “those who are outcast, ‘untouchable’,” the pope said. “With a compassion that literally causes him to tremble in his depths, he reveals the merciful heart of God.”

Quoting from the day’s reading where Mary Magdalene washed Jesus’ feet causing disconcertment and scandal, Francis emphasized how much this “astonishing attitude” was revolutionary.

“According to the mentality at the time, the separation between the saint and the sinner, between the pure and impure, had to be clear,” the pope said in the Paul VI hall in the Vatican. “But Jesus’ attitude is different.”

The Son of God does not shy away from the lepers, the possessed, the sick and the marginalized. The pope stressed that the love that Christ bore for the “untouchables” (referencing the Hindu caste system and the people who are too low to qualify for it) deeply shook his contemporaries.

“I believe that many Catholics believe themselves to be perfect and despise others. This is sad,” the pope said in an off-the-cuff remark. “We who are used to experiencing the forgiveness of sins, perhaps a little too ‘cheaply,’ should sometimes remember how much we cost the love of God,” he added.

When Jesus sees someone who suffers, he takes in that suffering and does not expect, as the stoics did, that the pain be endured with heroism. “Jesus feels compassion,” Francis said, zeroing in on a topic dear to his pontificate: Mercy.

The pope mentioned all those who live a sad life because no one is willing to look at them in the eyes in a different way, “with the heart of God, meaning with hope.”

Early on, Jesus got in trouble for forgiving the sins of the marginalized. Francis referred to the Gospel, when Jesus forgave the sins of a paralyzed and sinful man, knowing that the pain that the man felt in his soul was much graver than his physical illness.

“Son, your sins are forgiven!” Jesus told the man (Mark 2:5) scandalizing the Scribes who were present because his words “sounded like blasphemy, because only God can forgive sins,” the pope said.

But Jesus does not accept that human beings live forever with the “ineradicable tattoo” of sin. “Not only are they psychologically reassured, because they are freed from guilt,” the pope said. “Jesus does much more: He offers people who have made mistakes the hope of a new life, a life marked by love.”…

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis continued his catechesis on Christian hope with pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Hall for the Wednesday General Audience, saying that God’s mercy as embodied by Jesus both transforms us and renews our hope.

In his address to pilgrims at the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Francis spoke about God’s mercy and forgiveness as the driving force or the “motor” of Christian hope.

He reflected on the passage in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 7:44-50) in which Jesus forgives the sins of the woman who bathed his feet with her tears and a precious ointment.

Pope Francis said that Jesus’ merciful action causes scandal, because it overturns the dominant attitude of his time. Jesus, he said, embraced sinners and the “untouchables” of his day, rather than rejecting them as was commonplace.

Bishop calls homosexuality ‘gift from God,’ seeks to end ‘prejudices that kill’

August 9, 2017

A Brazilian bishop said on July 30 that homosexuality is a “gift from God.” After the reactions generated by his homily, Bishop Antônio Carlos Cruz Santos, appointed by Pope Francis in 2014, sent out a statement saying that he wanted to “save lives,” after learning about the high statistics of suicide among transgender people.

ROME - A Brazilian bishop said July 30 that homosexuality is a “gift from God.” Seeing the reaction his homily generated, Bishop Antônio Carlos Cruz Santos of Caicó then released a statement saying that his only scope was to “save lives,” after learning about the high statistics of suicide among the LGBT community.

“If it is not a choice, if it is not a disease, in the perspective of faith it can only be a gift,” the bishop of Caicó in the Rio Grande do Norte state said during his homily at a Mass closing feast of Santana de Caicó, always marked on the Sunday following the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne.

“The gospel par excellence is the gospel of inclusion,” said the bishop. “The gospel is a narrow door, yes, it is a demanding love, but it is a door that is always open.

“When you look at homosexuality, you cannot say it’s an option,” Cruz said, adding that a choice has to be made freely, while sexual orientation is something a person discovers “one day.”…

The bishop then said that homosexuality hasn’t been considered as a disease by the World Health Organization since the 1990s, and given this, and the fact that a person doesn’t choose to be gay, same-sex attraction can only be “a gift from God. It’s given by God. But perhaps our prejudices do not get the gift of God.”

`During his homily, Cruz said that when slavery was accepted, black people weren’t considered human, “they said we black people didn’t have a soul,” because of “prejudices.”

“Just as we were able to leap, in the wisdom of the Gospel, and overcome slavery, is it not the time for us to leap, from a perspective of faith, and overcome prejudices against our brothers who experience same-sex attraction?” the bishop asked…

…I’ll briefly discuss the role that dehumanization played in what is rightfully considered the single most destructive event in human history: the Second World War. More than seventy million people died in the war, most of them civilians. Millions died in combat. Many were burned alive by incendiary bombs and, in the end, nuclear weapons. Millions more were victims of systematic genocide. Dehumanization made much of this carnage possible…

Cathedral of Light - - The 1934 rally also introduced the spectacle of the Cathedral of Light—130 anti-aircraft searchlights pointed skyward to create columns of light.

1935 Chart from Nazi Germany used to explain the Nuremberg Laws.

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 employed a pseudo-scientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews.

People with four German grandparents (white circles) were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if they were descended from three or more Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right).

Either one or two Jewish grandparents made someone a Mischling (of mixed blood).

The Nazis used the religious observance of a person's grandparents to determine their race.

The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race", and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy. It was combined with a eugenics programme that aimed for racial hygiene by using compulsory sterilizations and extermination of the Untermenschen (or "sub-humans"), and which eventually culminated in the Holocaust. These policies targeted peoples, in particular Jews, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals and handicapped people, ethnic Poles, Russians who were labeled as "inferior" in a racial hierarchy that placed the Herrenvolk (or "master race") of the Volksgemeinschaft (or "national community") at the top, and ranked Russians, Romani, Serbs, Poles, persons of color and Jews at the bottom… Read more:

Executions of Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivanhorod, now Ukraine. The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted by a member of the Polish resistance.

“The gas chambers themselves [at Auschwitz] and the adjoining crematoria, viewed from a short distance, were not sinister-looking places at all; it was impossible to make them out for what they were. Over them were well-kept lawns with flower borders; the signs at the entrances merely said BATHS. The unsuspecting Jews thought they were simply being taken to the baths for the delousing which was customary at all camps. And taken to the accompaniment of sweet music!

“For there was light music. An orchestra of ‘young and pretty girls all dressed in white blouses and navy-blue skirts,’ as one survivor remembered, had been formed from among the inmates. While the selection was being made for the gas chambers this unique musical ensemble played gay tunes from The Merry Widow and Tales of Hoffmann. Nothing solemn and somber from Beethoven. The death marches at Auschwitz were sprightly and merry tunes, straight out of Viennese and Parisian operetta.

“To such music, recalling as it did happier and more frivolous times, the men, women and children were led into the ‘bath houses,’ where they were told to undress preparatory to taking a ‘shower.’ Sometimes they were even given towels. “Once they were inside the ‘shower-room’ — and perhaps this was the first moment that they may have suspected some thing was amiss, for as many as two thousand of them were packed into the chamber like sardines, making it difficult to take a bath — the massive door was slid shut, locked and hermetically sealed. Up above where the well-groomed lawn and flower beds almost concealed the mushroom-shaped lids of vents that ran up from the hall of death, orderlies stood ready to drop into them the amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide….

For the victims of Nazi terror the experience of arrest was often similar: it began with a heavy knock on the door in the early morning hours. Plain-clothes policemen would then drive the “suspects” to an unknown destination where they were usually interrogated under torture. If found guilty of whatever “crime” they had been charged with, they would either be executed or sent to a concentration camp.

The organisation responsible for these kinds of actions requires little introduction. To this day the Gestapo (or Geheime Staatspolizei) is known throughout the world as Hitler’s much-feared political police force, an organisation synonymous with the regime’s terror against those perceived as its mortal enemies: socialists, communists, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and “habitual criminals”. Between 1933 and 1945 tens of thousands of these “enemies of the Reich” were arrested, tortured and often murdered. Most of those who were sent to concentration camps were never seen again…

…In a dungeon, a terrified, naked prisoner would be handcuffed to an iron bar hung on chains from the ceiling. A guard then shoved him off in a slow arc and, at each return, another guard smashed his buttocks with a crowbar, while an officer barked questions.

A witness later described how ‘as the swinging went on and the wailing victim fainted and was then revived, only to faint again, the blows continued until only a mass of bleeding pulp remained’.

Most perished from this ordeal. ‘In the end a sack of bones and flayed flesh and fat was swept along the concrete floor and dragged away.’…

What the majority of the members of the curia and hierarchy seem to have managed to do, quite unknowingly - is to recreate nearly globally the same harsh and frightening years of the past childhood years growing up. It seems to be the reason that Pope Francis, who grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina - a social environment that was far from being antigay, it is where men have danced the tango together since the late 1800s to the present - it is the complete opposite social environment from Nazi Germany and Europe that was inundated with the fierce highly publicized antigay attacks that were deadly (than one can imagine) on the Catholic Church, it seems to be the reason why Pope Francis is always speaking about the curia and clergy to be more joyful. It seems quite possible that this joyless state stems from their early childhood years, including the obsessive worry about homosexuals being exposed or blackmailed by a third party similar to the Gestapoi.e. Lepanto Group - wealthy ultraconservative - Aggressive about only 2 issues - keeping Gays out of the Church and maintaining - untouched global markets.

The Pope faces his adversaries

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta with whom he had been in conflict for more than a month. This marks a new chapter in the opposition to the Argentine pontiff.

Nicolas Senèze, Rome - January 26, 2017

Excerpt:

…Still, more than the mafia-type dealings, it is the financial system itself that has obstructed the popes’ efforts. As early as 2009, in his encyclical Caritas in veritate, where he began to call into question the capitalist system, Benedict XVI was criticized by American conservatives. This discourse from the German pope was to be significantly developed and amplified by his successor. In his exhortation Evangelii gaudium, Francis directly opposed the "trickledown theory", one of the liberal dogmas in the United States. And in many of his speeches, he tackled the misdeeds of an unruly capitalism, the "silver god" that "corrupts", the economy that "kills".

In the United States, such talk which challenges the foundations of American free enterprise goes down badly. Francis has been described as a "Marxist" pope. His encyclicalLaudato struck also against the discourse of climate changedenial pushed by the petroleum giants.

Currently, the most severe attacks against the pope are coming from the United States. At the Order of Malta, the case of the Burmese condoms was put forward by the "Lepanto Institute for the restoration of all things in Christ". This ultraconservative organization specialized in the denunciation of "gays” entering the Church and in attacks on the major development associations that question unfettered economic liberalism…

VATICAN CITY — Conservative criticism of Pope Francis intensified Saturday after his intervention in the Knights of Malta order, with posters appearing around Rome citing his actions against conservative Catholics and asking: "Where's your mercy?"

The posters appeared on the same day that Francis cemented his authority over the Knights by naming a top Vatican archbishop, Angelo Becciu, to be his special delegate to the ancient aristocratic order…

Ian Kershaw “is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw).” Kershaw describes in great detail - the horrific atrocities instigated by Hitler and how we should see his place in history. Kershaw looks upon Hitler’s place in history as:

Primarily, as the inspiration of the mostlethal and destructive war in history, and of the most terrible genocidethe world has ever seen. He left behind him not just physical, but also moral, ruination such as history has never previously experienced. He represented an extremepathology of modern society. He showed us the most radical face of moderninhumanity – how an advanced society can undergo a breathtaking descent into modern barbarity that’s quite without precedent…

In God We Trust. This phrase is printed on the banknotes of the United States of America and is the current national motto. It appeared for the first time on a coin in 1864 but did not become official until Congress passed a motion in 1956. A motto is important for a nation whose foundation was rooted in religious motivations. For many it is a simple declaration of faith. For others, it is the synthesis of a problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy.

Religion, political Manichaeism and a cult of the apocalypse

Religion has had a more incisive role in electoral processes and government decisions over recent decades, especially in some US governments. It offers a moral role for identifying what is good and what is bad.

At times this mingling of politics, morals and religion has taken on a Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil. In fact, after President George W. Bush spoke in his day about challenging the “axis of evil” and stated it was the USA’s duty to “free the world from evil” following the events of September 11, 2001. Today President Trump steers the fight against a wider, generic collective entity of the “bad” or even the “very bad.” Sometimes the tones used by his supporters in some campaigns take on meanings that we could define as “epic.”

These stances are based on Christian-Evangelical fundamentalist principles dating from the beginning of the 20th Century that have been gradually radicalized. These have moved on from a rejection of all that is mundane – as politics was considered – to bringing a strong and determined religious-moral influence to bear on democratic processes and their results.

The term “evangelical fundamentalist” can today be assimilated to the “evangelical right” or “theoconservatism” and has its origins in the years 1910-1915. In that period a South Californian millionaire, Lyman Stewart, published the 12-volume work The Fundamentals. The author wanted to respond to the threat of modernist ideas of the time. He summarized the thought of authors whose doctrinal support he appreciated. He exemplified the moral, social, collective and individual aspects of the evangelical faith. His admirers include many politicians and even two recent presidents: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

The social-religious groups inspired by authors such as Stewart consider the United States to be a nation blessed by God. And they do not hesitate to base the economic growth of the country on a literal adherence to the Bible. Over more recent years this current of thought has been fed by the stigmatization of enemies who are often “demonized.”

The panorama of threats to their understanding of the American way of life have included modernist spirits, the black civil rights movement, the hippy movement, communism, feminist movements and so on. And now in our day there are the migrants and the Muslims. To maintain conflict levels, their biblical exegeses have evolved toward a decontextualized reading of the Old Testament texts about the conquering and defense of the “promised land,” rather than be guided by the incisive look, full of love, of Jesus in the Gospels…

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“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”Erik EriksonKids Are Being Hurt!!!